Speeding Up Healing Cycles

Looking Out at the Light

I wrote about "The Process of Releasing Pain From Your Energy Body" awhile ago, and it's still a blog that I highly recommend. In part, it's because I've never really seen anyone else write out that process in a way that is easily understandable, and in part, it's because it's not a one time deal. While life isn't necessarily linear, I am hoping that the structure of the post at least gives you a few benchmarks and ideas about how things may feel as you heal deeply. Because what usually happens is after you've started to heal and open up inside, the process speeds up.

Speeding Up Your Healing Process

I'm always extremely cautious about using terms like "speeding up" because life doesn't really operate on time. However, it certainly has felt like things speed up in my life as I've released old pain, and I've seen similar things with other friends and my students. Here's what I've noticed and what I intuitively know in how the healing process works:

There's a major issue.

That issue is blocking a whole lot of your energy

When it goes, a chain reaction can occur

Things can get really muddy and unclear like a dam bursting

Other issues start moving and clearing out--often on their own and without as much attention

Suddenly, it feels like life is throwing everything at you. Major life changes are coming. Major difficulties and major opportunities alike are showing up, and suddenly, you may feel very disoriented. This is often another crucial moment in the spiritual path because the illusion of safety that being stuck offered allowed us a certain level of stability. Just as being in a dark jail cell made it really clear what your walls were, the opportunity to be in the light outside of the prison is initially kind of blinding and overwhelming. And you have to make a decision to stand in this light.

The Teacher's Role In Acceleration

Once again, I don't want you to hold onto the idea of going fast or that a spiritual teacher "makes" you go faster. You call a spiritual teacher into your life to go at the pace you intuitively want to go--even if you aren't fully conscious of this inner aspiration. So the teacher takes you to your blocks and all the dams to your energy. This is often very uncomfortable. It can be excruciating to sit and look at the way you've self-sabotaged your own life, lived in fear, directed hatred at others, and other major issues. This often brings another key moment because many people immediately blame the teacher for these uncomfortable feelings and want to kick her/him out of their lives. But wherever you go, you take all your crap with you. And the teacher is just another energy source. You connect on that level, and it's your own energy that is really grinding against the walls of your resistance. In essence, you are resisting you. No one is doing anything to you, and you are feeling the immensity of the pain you carry inside you with the assistance of the presence of the teacher.

However, after connecting with a teacher in meditation, session, or some other setting, you may still feel that discomfort in your daily life. Your own awareness has grown, and like the overflowing sink in the kitchen, after you know what's going on, it's a lot harder to ignore the problem. That's when you need to get out the mop and go snake the drain.

But in the deepest moments, this healing often happens together. That clog in the drain comes up in the combined presence and love of you and the teacher. Things start to move and clear. Your energy opens up further. It's like a burst in a dam. That moving water starts to move other blocks in the dam and stirs up stagnant waters elsewhere. The aliveness and movement of your own energy is beginning to move, and that means change is coming to all aspects of your life.

The Dam Breaks and Fears of Being Washed Away

In some ways, spiritual awakening is like when the dam breaks. That may not mean that it is utterly destroyed. You may even try to rebuild the dam or multiple dams that have kept you locked in pain. The old ego programming and patterning can be really strong. But initially, you are awash in the euphoria of you. It has nothing to do with anyone else or any tool you may have used to finally burst free. This is the raw fullness of you that has always been there. But with all this moving energy, you're also unearthing and disrupting all the pain and lies and illusions in your life. You feel like you are cleaning house exceptionally fast, and it can be exhausting. So much can get churned up, and it will take most of your life's focus to be with it at times. That's just how I've seen it go. There's very little bartering to be done with this life force. You've already sold yourself out (like most of us have) for most of your life. This, too, is a humbling thing, and even if you've lived a very kind and heart-centered life, you will often find all kinds of hidden nastiness sitting down in the marrow of your soul.

It is a humbling process.

But as you are humbled, you may also fear that it will wash you away. It won't. It is cleaning you out. The river that bursts forth from the dam does come to an equilibrium in its flow. But it's been stopped up for so long that there's a huge amount of pent up energy that you are releasing. This is also why healing cycles can speed up. All this energy is now available that wasn't before. If you only have 3 gallons of gas available, your car won't drive very far. If you suddenly have 100 gallons available, you can drive quite a bit further. Awakening can kind of be like that, and it's also an amazing opportunity. This particular energy spike is sacred and transitory. Be sure to direct it consciously towards the one-person who really needs it right now: you.

Overwhelmed By the Flood of Darkness

For some of you, a lot of old pain will be unlocked. The river bursts into the swamp of your soul. Dark forgotten things are stirred up. Everything is exceptionally muddy for awhile. This can be terrifying depending on what is being brought up into your awareness. The more darkness you feel like you have to embrace, heal, and release, the more vital a spiritual support network is. The Buddhists are pretty on-point with this one. They talk about the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha--the 3 Jewels of Buddhism. Loosely speaking, the Buddha is the teacher; the Dharma is the teaching; and the Sangha is the community. These things make up a support network to help us get additional energy, support, love, and focus. The teacher can also be a healer as well, and the dharma can be many kinds of spiritual practices and tools that are based in love (meditation, breathwork, journaling, dictating/talking to a voice recorder about issues, and so forth). Finally, the community can be many kinds of communities--not just one. It can be online or in-person, although it is always really great to have an in-person community. These supports help to bolster you through the pain and to remember that no matter how dark it gets that you are loved, especially if you may have momentarily forgotten the depth and power of your own love.

The Power of the Deep Cleaning Cycle

The amazing thing is that with each thing that is healed, the more of your energy is now available. You're not always going to blow out a major cornerstone that has been blocking everything. Many of you will knock out pebbles here and there, and that too will have an effect of speeding up the healing. You will see new opportunities show up, and then new challenges arise. If you complete those challenges and heal the inner blockages that they've illuminated, more opportunities arise. More expansion from within comes out and elicits expansion from the outer world. Some of the expansions will call in more difficult life lessons, and some will call in extremely pleasurable life lessons. As always, it's very easy to be with the pleasurable ones, but I encourage you to hold them lightly just like with the difficult ones. You can quickly turn pleasure into pain by holding on, and then you've turned a pleasurable life lessons (like meeting a soulmate who is only meant to be in your life a few months) into a painful journey.

Slowing Down Whenever Possible

Now, it may seem wildly crazy to slow down once things get moving. You suddenly realize how stuck you've been your whole life, and you're like, "Jim, I ain't putting the brakes on now. Look at all the amazing stuff that's come into my life!" Well, you can always choose to do whatever you want to do. That's the beauty of choice, and as always, my blogs are just suggestions and nothing more. The deeper truth is that you already know in reading this paragraph if it applies to you. You already know if you need to slow down to catch your breath, to rest, and to see what exactly has moved and make sure that you've done what you needed to do with a specific block or in building a new foundation to embrace the latest opportunity life has given you. It is very easy to get out of balance because quite frankly most of you have never really healed tons of pain in the way it can be released energetically--which cleans you out on heart, body, mind, and soul. This isn't an accusation. This is just what I've observed from most of my experiences. I may certainly be wrong.

But there's nothing ever lost in slowing down. You may notice that masters go very slowly because ultimately where is there to go?

Finding Your Stability Again...And Again

But you will have to learn how to paddle in these new currents. Sitting in stagnant swamp waters isn't hard. There's hardly any movement at all, but if life has become like whitewater rapids, you've got a lot of paddling to do. You may feel out of control, and really, the illusion of control is being shattered as well. But it is important to keep a strong discipline with your spiritual practices to maintain your inner balance and stability. Doing that helps you to manage the rapids and learn when it is time to dock your boat.

Of course, your inner always knowing knows the truth. This is why when healing and expansion/contraction cycles speed up, it's vital to keep returning to that space inside you again and again to check with your inner knowing about what is right for you. In so doing, you are embracing the fullness that is you. It doesn't matter if you have had an awakening or not, these cycles can move through all of our lives, and in truth, they all naturally want to occur anyway. We're energetically built to flow and to change. It is our true nature that we are tapping into with healing; not some super-human super power. However, if you'd like a little help, spiritual teachers like me are around, but most of all, trust that you do know what speed you need to go and don't be afraid to step out into the unknown that healing and awakening may offer.

Today's photo comes from my friend and reader, Becky
Stiller. Please feel free to check out her beautiful work on this flickr link.